In recent years, mobile wireless communication devices have become popular, and many individuals, families, and organizations use or own multiple mobile wireless communication devices. As would be appreciated by a person having ordinary skill in the art, there are many kinds of mobile wireless communication devices, including, for example, smart phones, tablets, laptops, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, and many others. These mobile wireless communication devices are capable of sending and receiving wireless radio frequency signals over one or more wireless communication networks, such as cellular (e.g., 2G, 2.5G, 3G, 4G, LTE, LTE advanced, etc.) networks, local-area (e.g., Wi-Fi) networks, or other wireless communication networks.
As the computing power of mobile end-user devices (e.g., smart phones, tablets, etc.) has increased, mobile devices have become capable of sending and receiving increasing amounts of data. In addition to e-mail and text messages, many of today's mobile devices can support a variety of applications that send large quantities of information to and from end users. For example, in addition to sending e-mail and text messages, many of today's mobile devices can deliver news, weather, sports, maps, social networking information, music, videos, high-resolution photographs, documents, presentations, and other kinds of information. Furthermore, users can take advantage of applications that provide transactional services, e.g., shopping for content (books, music, videos, etc.) or applications.
The ability of mobile devices to send and receive such a wide variety and large quantity of data has stressed wireless access network bandwidth capabilities. As a result, network operators are either eliminating service plans with unlimited data usage, or they are increasing the price of unlimited service plans so that such plans are not attractive to most consumers. Consequently, many users of mobile end-user devices subscribe to service plans that include only a limited amount of data per fixed time period (e.g., per month). Because today's mobile end-user devices can access (e.g., send or receive) large amounts of information, there is a potential for a user of a mobile device to exceed his or her data plan allowance without realizing it. It is well known that such “overages” in data usage can be very expensive because the billing rate for data usage exceeding the contracted service plan amount is often significantly higher than the billing rate under the service plan. At the same time subscribers face an increasing potential for overage conditions and thus may be reticent to take advantage of wireless access network data services, network operators face declining revenues and are motivated to increase data adoption by their subscribers.
Today, users of mobile devices (e.g., cellular phones, smart phones, etc.) subscribe to a service plan in order to take advantage of various services including voice, messaging, and data services offered by wireless service providers (e.g., carriers). This application discloses novel approaches that allow users to purchase services on an as-needed, a la carte basis, thus enabling users to have customized service plans and service plan combinations. This application also discloses novel ways to present information associated with voice, messaging, and data service plans through user interfaces of mobile devices.
The increased computing power of mobile devices has led to an explosion in the number of applications that are available for mobile devices. Hundreds of thousands of applications are available for Android-based devices and for Apple-based devices, and the number of available applications continues to grow at a rapid pace. Many of these applications are available for subscribers to download or purchase through an electronic “app store” or “marketplace.” A subscriber may find applications of interest to him or her by typing in a search word or phrase in a field in a search field offered by the app store or marketplace, or he or she may find an application by browsing a list offered by the app store or marketplace (e.g., popular applications). Often, however, subscriber visits to the app store are “hit and miss” unless a subscriber happens to know the name of a desired application or happens to type in a search word or phrase that results in the application being presented.
For application developers, getting subscribers to see, download, purchase, or use their applications is critical to the application developers' success because their revenues depend on purchases, downloads, and/or use of their applications. Yet because of the sheer number of applications available through marketplaces and app stores, and because of how subscribers may behave when browsing through the marketplace or app store, application developers have little control over whether a subscriber even finds their applications. This application discloses methods to improve the presentation and discovery of services, service plans, applications and content for users of mobile wireless communication devices.